All posts by Fiona Morgan
Fiona Morgan ·
16 Jun 2009, 12:28 PM ·
Comment
The North Carolina legislature got one step closer today to passing a bill that would prevent bullying and harassment of children, but not without some rhetorical fireworks from one of the measure’s most vocal detractors.
As Mark Binker reports for the Greensboro News & Record, the House Judiciary I Committee voted 9-5 in favor of SB 526, the School Violence Prevention Act, which would require school districts to adopt polices to counter bullying. The bill has already passed the Senate and is expected to reach the House floor this week
According to Twitter reports from the committee room, N.C. Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam, a Republican from Apex, argued vehemently against language in the bill that would specifically protect children from being bullied on the basis of sexual orientation. The bill also includes language about race and religion. Its supporters say policies that spell out the basis of the harassment are more effective. The coalition of supporters includes the state Parent Teacher Association and NC Pediatric Society.
Stam reportedly called same sex parents “more dangerous than second-hand smoke.”
Here are some highlights of the bullying discussion, presented in chronological order, with Twitter lingo intact. (Note: an @symbol before a name indicates that is the party’s Twitter username. #NCGA is a hashtag that indicates the post pertains to the North Carolina General Assembly.) :
@PPCNC [Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina] #ncga Stam now fear-mongering, anti-bullying bill will lead to marriage equality-I wish
@PPCNC #ncga Now Stam saying having same sex parents more dangerous than second hand smoke, really over edge now
@gregflynn Stam is repeating lie about “30 sexual orientations”. This is NOT in DSM-IV as definitions of SO. It’s a lie. #ncga
As bills fly quickly through the legislature during these last few weeks of the session, Twitter has become an increasingly valuable resource for finding out the status and hearing discussion of legislation. You can read these accounts by searching Twitter.com for the hashtag #NCGA (for North Carolina General Assembly).
You’ll see a mix of tweets (Twitter posts) from journalists, advocates and citizens of various political stripes. If you want to follow professional journalists’ posts, we highly recommend @LauraLeslie (WUNC radio’s capitol reporter), @binker (Mark Binker of the News & Record), @Josh_Ellis (of StateGovernmentRadio.com) and @Barry_Smith (of N.C.’s Freedom Newspapers).
North Carolina, media bullying bill, media, NC General Assembly, Paul Stam, twitter
Fiona Morgan ·
12 Jun 2009, 12:50 PM ·
2 Comments
The N.C. House of Representatives got one step closer to closing the Governor Morehead School yesterday when it passed the first reading of the state budget bill.
Meanwhile supporters of the state’s only school for the blind protested the proposed closure Thursday afternoon. Approximately 60 people, including many alumni and parents, stood on the sidewalk along Ashe Avenue in front of the historic campus. Six-year-old Paige Strickland, a graduate of the Governor Morehead Preschool, stood beside her mother, holding her cane, chanting along with the crowd, “Don’t shut us down!” Passing cars offered honks of support, rallying the people who stood in the hot afternoon sun. They held signs that said, “Keep GMS Open,” “Why hurt our children to cut the deficit?” and “For sale: Blind school, $4 B or best offer.”
The proposal calls for the Morehead school to stop accepting new students to its K-12 program and move remaining students to either their local school districts or to one or both of the state’s schools for the deaf, located in Wilson and Morganton.
The state is roughly $4.6 billion short this year, which has prompted deep cuts to education and human services across the board. The proposed closoure of GMS is just one of many ways children, educators and the disabled would be affected.
Those who gathered to support GMS say they’re concerned the quality of education will suffer if blind and deaf students are placed in the same school. They also worry that a dismantling of the GMS campus would mean an end to its ability to provide expertise and assistance to thousands of blind students in public schools statewide. The fate of the Governor Morehead Preschool program, which serves approximately 800 children from birth to age 5, is also uncertain.
“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said John DeLuca, a graduate of the GMS who went on to attend Duke University and Stanford Law School. Now an administrative court judge, he spent 10 years supervising the Division of Services for the Blind at what is now the Department of Health and Human Resources. “Nobody says it’s about improving the quality of services, or even keeping them the same. It’s purely a money-driven decision. The kids who are here now are here because their local public schools were not able to adequately serve them.”
“The battle in the House is lost,” said Gary Ray of the North Carolina Federation of the Blind. He said advocates will focus their efforts on legislative representatives that will work on the budget when it goes into conference, ironing out differences between the House and Senate versions. The Senate version currently calls for deep budget cuts to the blind and deaf schools, but does not mention a closure or consolidation.
House members debated the budget throughout the day and into the evening on Thursday. Rep. Hugh Blackwell (R-Burke County), whose district includes Morganton, introduced an amendment (PDF, 568 KB) that calls for a joint legislative task force on educational services for the deaf and blind. It would take the decision on whether and how to consolidate the schools out of the hands of DHHS and into the hands of a set of lawmakers and political appointees, with deaf and blind educators and graduates of the schools in question included among the non-voting members.
That amendment was not voted on Thursday night. It awaits a fiscal note from legislative staff. If that note comes through by the time the House convenes at 8 p.m. today, Blackwell says he will reintroduce it.
Update: Blackwell’s amendment passed and is part of the House version of the budget bill.
North Carolina, education, politics NC General Assembly, NCGA
Fiona Morgan ·
13 May 2009, 11:28 AM ·
2 Comments
Consumer protection language that was recently added to House Bill 1180, the “Consumer Voice and Investment Act,” was completely stripped from that bill in the House Public Utilities Committee on Tuesday.
The cable and telephone industry are lobbying for this bill as they roll out new triple-play services that bundle telephone, TV and high-speed Internet services. This bill would allow them to raise rates with effectively no regulation.
Language proposed by Rep. Bill Faison would have exempted from this deregulation any area in which fewer than 90 percent of households have reliable wireless service and/or broadband Internet service. (see section 1h of the second version.)
The backers of this bill include anti-tax groups bankrolled by conservatives and the telecom industry:
The Institute for Policy Innovation, The American Consumer Institute (more about them here), and Americans for Prosperity, which organized the “tea parties” on tax day.
The bill is scheduled for vote by the full House today, May 13.
North Carolina broadband, NC General Assembly, NCGA
Fiona Morgan ·
7 May 2009, 4:55 PM ·
1 Comment
Dogged grassroots activism, organized by the City of Wilson’s blogging public affairs manager Brian Bowman, Greensboro politico Jay Ovittore at StoptheCap.com, and a network of interested geeks on Twitter (#stopthecap), beat back the anti-muni broadband bill into study committees in both the state House and Senate this week.
But other broadband-related issues are still under consideration at the General Assembly, and for now, they’re flying under the radar — despite backing by the same telecom industry-friendly groups.
The first involves a statewide map that promises to show exactly where broadband Internet service is and isn’t available. That map, expected within the next two weeks, is being put together by the industry-backed group Connected Nation and paid for by the industry. Will lawmakers be content to make policy based on information that’s neither verifiable nor transparent?
The second is a bill AT&T is pushing for that would deregulate phone service in the state. After the House session concluded Wednesday evening, the House Ways & Means/Broadband Connectivity committee passed HB 1180, the “Consumer Choice and Investment Act,” which addresses the shifting nature of the phone service market by allowing phone companies to raise rates and by removing “antiquated statutory and regulatory restrictions.” The bill will go next to House Public Utilities.
The version (PDF) that passed Wednesday night contains changes co-sponsor and committee chair Rep. Bill Faison says add consumer protections that address the concerns of those who oppose it.
Analysis of those changes to come. Meanwhile, it’s worth knowing who spoke to that committee in favor of the bill, changes and all:
The Institute for Policy Innovation, an anti-tax group out of Texas which opposes municipal broadband,
The American Consumer Institute, which has taken a position firmly in support of Time Warner Cable’s bandwidth caps proposal.
and Americans for Prosperity, which organized the “tea parties” on tax day and rallied support for the anti-muni broadband bill.
Even defining phone service is getting trickier as companies like AT&T offer both traditional analog phone and digital voice-over-Internet-Protocol service as part of triple-play products designed to compete with similar bundled services from companies like Time Warner Cable.
Until Congress and the FCC weigh in definitively on these issues, we’re likely to see this sort of policy hashed out at the state level, with lobbyists for the cable industry and the telephone companies jockeying to get the sweeter deal.
Uncategorized broadband, NC General Assembly, NCGA
Fiona Morgan ·
6 May 2009, 4:01 PM ·
2 Comments
Updated, see below.
More than 100 people—citizens, lobbyists, elected officials and members of the press—attended Wednesday morning’s meeting of the House Public Utilities Committee. Those rallied by the Americans for Prosperity, sponsors of the tax day “tea parties,” wore red shirts to show their support for the bill. Opponents wore yellow stickers that said, “Save NC Broadband.”
Several hoped to speak about House Bill 1252, which would have required local governments that offer Internet and other telecom services to tack on to customer fees the difference in the amount it would cost a private company to provide the service and prohibit governments from “cross-subsidizing” the launch or operation of a system, a practice common in private industry. (For more background, see “Broadband bill would penalize cities,” Independent Weekly, April 29, 2009)
But the only people who spoke were committee members and the bill’s sponsors, who addressed the mounting controversy by introducing a substitute that would send the bill to committee for further study.
Study committees are often where bills go to die. That’s what happened in 2007, the last time the General Assembly considered a similar measure, which is why Time Warner and the state’s cable industry had opposed efforts earlier this year to compromise by turning the legislation into a study bill, says Rep. Ty Harrell, the bill’s chief sponsor.
But Harrell says he does not intend to let the measure die but hopes it will have “a thorough chewing-on.”
“Let me just say, this is a highly complex issue, and it’s not as simple as many would like to think,” Harrell said to the committee. “I think both sides of the coin are in agreement that this thing needs to be studied, it needs to be discussed.”
Rep. Bill Faison, who chairs the House Ways and Means / Broadband Connectivity committee, argued that his committee would be a better venue for making that study than House Finance or the Revenue Laws Study Committee. Faison’s committee originated out of an interim study committee on broadband Internet access, authorized by House Speaker Joe Hackney, that could continue its work even when the legislature is not in session. “That committee already has the knowledge base, knows the scope of the problem and has been making great progress,” Faison said.
Politically, changing the bill’s course likely means it will not be voted on by the General Assembly during the 2009-2010 session, as only those bills that either pass one body of the legislature by May 14 or concern finance and revenue are considered to have “made crossover.” Continue reading »
North Carolina broadband, NC General Assembly
Fiona Morgan ·
5 May 2009, 2:38 PM ·
Comment
The battle over municipal broadband Internet services continues tomorrow, May 6, when the N.C. House Public Utilities Committee will be the second to consider House Bill 1252, which would severely limit the ability of local governments to provide broadband Internet and other telecommunications services.
The committee meets at 10 a.m. in Legislative Building room 1228. A vote is expected.
The North Carolina Cable and Telecommunications Association has been running push-polls across the state to generate support for the bill, which it says will “level the playing field” by forcing municipal service providers to add fees and meet other requirements when they compete with private industry.
And Americans for Prosperity, the same group that sponsored “tea parties” on tax day, is also running robocalls in favor of the legislation and trying to rally support online.
Opponents are mobilizing, too. They say the bill would effectively stop local governments from providing Internet service even when private companies choose not to offer the speed and availability citizens and local businesses need.
A blog called Stop the Cap!, which voices opposition to Time Warner Cable’s recent proposal to cap its customers bandwidth, had run a series of posts focusing on the North Carolina legislation, which is heavily backed by Time Warner Cable. Google recently joined Alcatel-Lucent, Intel and a number of other private industry groups in a joint letter to House Speaker Joe Hackney opposing the bill. The City of Raleigh and Town of Chapel Hill have also passed resolutions opposing it.
The bill passed the House Science and Technology Committee last month without a vote, and without a favorable recommendation, following testimony from many opponents.
North Carolina broadband, NCGA, technology
Fiona Morgan ·
22 Apr 2009, 4:50 PM ·
7 Comments
Maybe someone should invite Howard Weaver out for a nice game of golf. The retired McClatchy executive seems to find it hard to keep his hands off the keyboard, and it’s a rather sensitive time for employees — and former employees — of the newspapers he used to oversee.
After launching a defensive back and forth in the comments thread of Romenesko yesterday with News & Observer reporter Joe Neff, Weaver today raised the topic again on his blog, Etaoin Shrdlu, where he has continued to opine about the newspaper business and McClatchy’s role in innovating it — and, perhaps inadvertently, fed the fire of resentment rising in those who see McClatchy’s poor business decisions as the root cause of The N&O’s recent layoffs.
While today’s post demonstrated sympathy toward those who’ve lost their jobs, Weaver repeated an earlier assertion that The N&O was in bad shape long before McClatchy came along:
I don’t apologize for expressing the facts as I know them. It simply isn’t helpful to build mythologies based on anger and blame that don’t reflect reality. [...] For example, those who argue that McClatchy took over a thriving N&O and greedily ran it into the ground are misinformed, and perpetuating that myth hurts the cause of reconstruction.
Frank Daniels, Jr., whose family sold the newspaper to McClatchy in 1995, tells the Indy that Weaver is the one perpetuating a myth, at least in part.
“As far as we were concerned, we were doing extremely well. Financials had nothing to do with our decision to sell,” Daniels says. “So he’s just mistaken.”
Continue reading »
media layoffs, News & Observer, newspapers
Fiona Morgan ·
22 Apr 2009, 1:50 PM ·
Comment
Click the photo to see the full front page.
It’s been a very sad month for those of us who work in journalism, as we watch dedicated people whose work we admire and whose talents we envy lose their jobs. What makes it all the more sad is that they aren’t just victims of an economic downturn that will eventually turn back around. It’s not at all clear that the jobs they’re leaving will ever come back. Even though we understand the root causes — declining ad revenue, the decoupling of classifieds with newsprint, the crushing debt of corporate owners — we can’t help but wonder at a deeper level why the work we value doesn’t have the value it once did.
That, I imagine, is the doubt that hangs over those left in The News & Observer’s newsroom today, following the departure of another 31 staffers due to layoffs and buyouts that were announced last month.
An anonymous staffer’s mock front page (excerpted above; click the photo for the full page) lists the names of all departing staffers. (Hat tip to Jim Romenesko and NewRaleigh.) They include reporters Joe Miller, Sam Spies and Sabine Vollmer; editors Ned Barnett, Van Denton and Rob Waters; photographer Jason Arthurs; as well as several copy editors and production folks, people whose work was often behind the scenes, but nonetheless essential. There’s no dead wood on that list. Continue reading »
media layoffs, News & Observer
Fiona Morgan ·
14 Apr 2009, 11:25 AM ·
11 Comments
Update 4/16: A vote on the bill was postponed to next Wednesday, April 22.
N.C. Rep. Ty Harrell, who represents western Wake County in the General Assembly, last week introduced a House companion to a Senate bill that would effectively stop local governments from building their own broadband Internet and other telecommunications services if they compete with private industry.
Harrell is an otherwise progressive legislator. He’s a co-sponsor of the comprehensive sex education bill, the Healthy Youth Act and the anti-bullying bill, the School Violence Prevention Act. He has twice received our endorsement. But by sponsoring HB 1252, Harrell has angered a wide grassroots base. Since introducing the bill, he says he’s heard from many progressives who oppose it.
“I did not know there would be this type of response, to be honest with you,” Harrell said in an interview.
He’s likely to hear more of that response this Wednesday, April 15, when the same coalition that fought the anti-muni broadband bill in 2007 plans to attend the House Science and Technology Committee meeting at 11 a.m. in Legislative Office Building room 425.
Harrell is chairman of that committee (though under House rules he won’t chair discussion of a bill he sponsors.) He says Time Warner Cable is based in his district and approached him about sponsoring the bill, which would require local governments to tack on to the fees they charge consumers the difference in the amount it would cost a private company to provide the service. Also under the bill, a city could not use government funds to “cross-subsidize” the launch or operation of a system, a practice common in private industry.
“You’ve got the municipalities who are more of less being subsidized by private industry in the sense that they don’t pay property tax, they don’t pay income tax, they receive rebates on their sales tax for these services and they have access to tax-free financing,” Harrell said, summarizing the industry’s argument. “I wanted to make sure that I look out for the businesses that are in my district. It was not an intent to rub out or punish municipalities that try to provide this service.”
But the bill’s opponents say that’s precisely the industry’s goal. They say these prohibitions artificially increase the cost of the municipal service and impose obligations that private industry does not have to meet. The cities of Wilson and Salisbury have already beaten a path to Harrell’s door, seeking to explain that building their own telecommunications infrastructure allows them to offer faster speeds and greater capacity than private industry is willing to build for their citizens.
The League of Municipalities, which lobbies for the interests of towns and cities across the state, is circulating a resolution to their members laying out the arguments against the bill (PDF).
Among the League’s concerns is the fact that North Carolina would be ineligible for $4.7 billion in federal stimulus grants set aside for local and state governments to provide broadband Internet service to unserved and underserved areas.
The timing of the bill is made worse by Time Warner Cable’s recent announcement that it would institute bandwidth caps for its customers in Greensboro and other cities nationwide. Customers who use more than their capped allotment (40 GB being the highest tier) will have to pay $1 per extra GB. Those customers are not happy and they’re fighting back with help from national groups like Free Press.
Continue reading »
politics broadband, Internet, NC General Assembly, Ty Harrell
Fiona Morgan ·
1 Apr 2009, 12:11 PM ·
1 Comment
How many gigabytes of bandwidth do you consume each month? No idea? Well, if you’re a Time Warner Cable customer, you may need to start keeping track.
Business Week reports that the company has launched a “tiered pricing” structure in four U.S. markets, including Greensboro, N.C. The idea is to charge customers for Internet access according to how much data they consume, in the same way cell phone plans charge according to the number of minutes you use.
The impact will likely be to reduce consumers’ use of online audio and video, because YouTube videos will start to feel like pay-per-view movies.
Customers will be charged $1 for each gigabyte (GB) over their plan’s cap. Time Warner Cable offers four cap levels of 5, 10, 20, and 40 GB [per month]. A download of a high-definition movie typically eats up about 8 GB.
The report quotes an analyst who says the average family could end up spending $200 per month on broadband usage fees just watching video.
It’s unfortunate that the industry would launch a business plan that will significantly increase consumer costs and likely reduce use of and demand for their service, while sending their lobbyists to whine to state lawmakers that they need taxpayer funds to subsidize their business because not enough people sign up for their service.
The industry line is that rural communities don’t have Internet access because there’s not enough demand; well, this will reduce demand. Continue reading »
North Carolina, media broadband
